BRAZIL: BOBSLEIGING: Brazilian bobsleigh team aiming for 'Better Than Gold' at the Winter Olympic
Record ID:
332092
BRAZIL: BOBSLEIGING: Brazilian bobsleigh team aiming for 'Better Than Gold' at the Winter Olympic
- Title: BRAZIL: BOBSLEIGING: Brazilian bobsleigh team aiming for 'Better Than Gold' at the Winter Olympic
- Date: 10th February 2006
- Summary: SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) (audio of reporter asking: What is it that you liked so much about bobsled? ERIC MALESON SAYING: "The speed and the fact that it is very similar to Formula 1. Brazilians are crazy about Formula 1 (smiles) so when I saw this sled going by 100 kilometres an hour I said That for me, thats what I want to do."
- Embargoed: 25th February 2006 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Brazil
- Country: Brazil
- Topics: Sports
- Reuters ID: LVA37Q5218O7Q8TT4RPYF9MI5W5T
- Story Text: When Eric Maleson won a few thousand dollars in the
Brazilian lottery in the late 1980s, he decided to spend
them on a trip to the United States to learn English.
Around the same period, in a small town in
Massachusetts, Lisa Papandrea told herself it was time to
change her life and flee her violent husband.
Almost 20 years later, the two have pulled together the
first ever Brazilian bobsleigh team and are attending their
second Winter Olympics, having married at the Salt Lake
City Games.
The teams are wearing their colours proudly - all 6 of
them had SouthTyrollian-styled suits made for them which
they will wear at the opening ceremony on Friday.
They were designed by an Italian, Michi Klemera, from
the Luis Trenker house. Although it was Trenker who offered
to design their costumes Lisa says they were happy to
accept because Trenker himself was an extraordinary
character whose long career spanned across several
disciplines including film making, architecture and, most
important of all, adventure.
Eric says it was adventure that led him to bobsleigh
and to his wife.
He arrived in the United States in winter and his new
friends kept encouraging him to take on winter sports. As
soon as he saw bobsleigh he said it was the one for him. He
was hooked
Bobsleighs reach speeds of up to 100 km per hour.
His wife fully supports him but she can't help worrying
about him.
Eric has had several accidents two of them serious. He
says he was knocked unconscious in Austria when he broke
his chin on curve 9. His team mate and breakman Armando
Santos had to hold him back to make sure he didn't break
anything else on the way down.
He now has two titanium pins holding together his
fractured chin and some ruptured ligaments in his knee that
still await surgery.
As a result he is not taking part in thie Turin
Olympics but he believes he may compete in the 2010 games.
Its the first time Brazil has a team in the bobsleigh
event.
Winter sports are not traditional to the tropical
country where people are more used to shedding their
clothes for the carnival than piling them on to throw snow
at each other.
But Maleson was so inspired that he founded a winter
sports organisation and became the president of Brazil's
ice sports.
He found his team in Brazil. His frist recruit was a
Brazilian friend, Ricardo Raschini, who delivered pizzas in
the Boston area.
Raschini is now the pilot for the four-man team in
Turin, while Maleson himself is not competing this time due
to various injuries.
Maleson also tapped Brazil's athletic community for his
emerging ice sports organisation, turning weight lifters
and runners into speed skaters and skeleton pilots.
The Turin bobsled team includes a decathlete, a discus
thrower and a hammer thrower.
The Brazilians are friendly with the Jamaican bobsleigh
team, and their stories have some parallels -- both make
unlikely winter athletes, and the Jamaican experience was
turned into a Hollywood film, entitled "Cool Runnings."
Maleson and Palandrea are also planning a movie. But
they point out that while the Jamaicans only have a bobsled
team, their own plans go beyond the steel-and-ice track.
Maleson wants Brazil to become a force to reckon with
at the Winter Olympics, churning out ice sports stars.
The couple want to turn their story into a film. The
have already signed a contract with a producer and found
Rodrigo Santoro to play Eric's part.
They have no leading lady yet but Lisa says she'd love
Marisa Tomei to play her.
It would be called 'Better than Gold'
No wonder Papandrea wants to turn their story into a
film.
The couple met and fell in love in Scituate,
Massachusetts, where Maleson worked at the catering
business of Papandrea's stepmother to bolster his lottery
money.
Papandrea divorced her husband, settled down with the
tall, quietly-spoken Brazilian, and both continued working
in restaurants -- until Maleson discovered bobsleigh
racing. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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